National Novel Writing Month is held every November and the concept is delightfully simple: write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.
Why? There's no real reason, as far as I can tell, but why write anything?
I have decided that this November I will participate. I have been writing more than I ever have been before. I really enjoy it, however, blogging (at least how I do it) is an entirely different beast from creative writing. This will be a good opportunity to stretch my creative muscles (which has atrophied over the past few years) and make a fool of myself to boot.
What I haven't decided on is whether or not I'll blog about it. One option is to post my day's work to Blankbaby under a new category, however, I don't even like talking about my ideas for novels and stories so the very idea of letting people see a work in progress in an uncontrolled manner freaks me out. I've participated in writing workshops, heck I've even ran some, but those are far more structured and everyone has a piece of writing to discuss. Posting stuff on Blankbaby would be decidedly one way (of course people would be able to comment); i.e. everyone gets to critique my work and I don't get to say anything about your crappy writing (though I'm sure that since the vast majority of Blankbaby readers are smarter than I am, you all are also much better writers than I am. This theory holds true since most of the blogs that link to good old Blankbaby make this blog look like it was written by a slightly retarded, I mean 'special', monkey with a Powerbook).
